Each child is a unique and unrepeatable being. Each is the image of God. All have the right to grow healthy and strong, to study, to play, to laugh. All children have the right to be children.

       Yet, not all have the opportunity to be so. Not street children because they must beg in order to eat; not children of war because they must kill in order to live; not children with AIDS because their future has been taken from them; not slave children because they have lost their freedom.

       All, in one way or another, have lost their childhood, many will lose their lives.

        Not all children have the gift of faith. Millions of children in Africa and Asia do not know Jesus.

       Whenever I am indifferent to the needs of these children, I become an accomplice to all these atrocities.

        The Holy Childhood has the task of helping all children in the name of the Catholic Church.

         During the year 2000 we have been able to subsidise 2471 projects, divided as follows:

"If we have truly started out anew from the contemplation of Christ, we must learn to see him especially in the faces of those with whom he himself wished to be identified: "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me" (Mt 25:35-37). This Gospel text is not a simple invitation to charity: it is a page of Christology which sheds a ray of light on the mystery of Christ. By these words, no less than by the orthodoxy of her doctrine, the Church measures her fidelity as the Bride of Christ". (n° 49)
(H. H. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Novo millennio ineunte)